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US stock market futures down fractionally (SPY -0.01%) following the abrupt firing of FBI Director James Comey. Safe havens are getting a bid, with gold up $0.8% to $1225/ounce and crude up ahead of inventory reports.

What Is Moving the Markets

LONDON (Reuters) - European shares held at 21-month highs on Wednesday, while the dollar fell on concerns that U.S. President Donald Trump's dismissal of his FBI chief could make passage of his tax reform plans more difficult.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Earlier this year, engineers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc who track rivals' prices online got a rude surprise: the technology they were using to check Amazon.com several million times a day suddenly stopped working.

(Reuters) - U.S. broadcaster Tribune Media Co , reported a quarterly loss on Wednesday, compared with a profit a year earlier, hurt in part by lower ad revenue from its TV and entertainment business and as it took an impairment charge.

ZURICH (Reuters) - ChemChina [CNCC.UL] has won around 82 percent support from Syngenta shareholders for its $43 billion takeover of the Swiss pesticides and seeds group, China's biggest foreign acquisition to date, the two companies said on Wednesday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Proxy adviser Glass Lewis recommended on Tuesday that BlackRock Inc shareholders "express their concern" regarding the world's largest asset manager's pay of its top executives, including CEO Larry Fink.

LONDON (Reuters) - Barclays Chief Executive Jes Staley apologized to shareholders on Wednesday for his attempts to unmask a whistleblower, but faced calls from individual shareholders to resign over his conduct.

It was a return to the old, familiar routine on Wednesday morning, when President Trump went after Democrats on Twitter for their reaction to his decision to fire FBI Director James Comey.

"The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad!" the president tweeted Wednesday.

The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2017

Trump unexpectedly fired Comey - the man who had been leading the controversial investigation into potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia - on Tuesday evening, a decision some media reports suggested he had expected would be met with a favorable reception from Democrats, and especially the Clinton team, especially after Hillary accused Comey of being the catalyst behind her losing the election. The dismissal came in a signed letter from Trump to Comey that said it was time for a "new beginning" at the nation's "crown jewel of law enforcement." Comey was in LA at the time, and learned about his termination while watching TV.

Needless to say, the move "shocked" Washington and sparked outrage from Democrats, who said the president was trying to shut down the FBI's investigation. Democratic lawmakers fired off statements condemning the president's actions and impugning his motives, with some alluding to the Watergate era.

The most vocal response came from Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer late Tuesday raised questions about the reasoning behind Comey's firing. "Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president?" Schumer asked during a news ...

With so much taking place overnight, and confused global market whipsawing in the aftermath of a barrage of political, geopolitical and earnings news, here is another recap to follow our traditional market wrap, this time courtesy of JPMorgan, focusing on the key things that are happening this morning.

From JPM's Adam Crisafulli

Market update - Asia saw mixed price action, Eurozone stocks are off small, and US futures are down a few points.

What's happening this morning? There are a few moving pieces this morning. Trump managed to go a few days w/o controversy (a relatively long stretch for the current White House) but the Comey firing is by far the biggest headline of the night. As far as the market is concerned, Comey's dismissal saps Trump's political capital and weakens relations w/Congress at the time when he is trying to move an ambitious pro-growth agenda through the Senate and House.

* * *

China's inflation data provides further evidence of CQ1 being the country's near-term nominal growth peak (PPI cooled by more than expected). It was a mixed night of US earnings (DIS, FOSL, and YELP all suffered afterhours weakness; FOSL and YELP in particular plunged; that being said semiconductor numbers were strong w/great figures from MCHP and NVDA).

Europe - the major indices are flat-to-down small. Autos, basic resources, retail, energy, and utilities are outperforming while media, real estate, telecoms, industrials, and luxury are lagging. There were a bunch of earnings in Europe but none were particularly controversial. Barratt Developments, ING, Ahold Delhaize, and AXA are all higher after reporting (AXA also announced plans to IPO its US life insurance operation). ITV and Heidberg Cement are trading lower on earnings.

Just as the reflation trade appeared to be finding its latest wind, after a modest rise in oil prices over the past 24 hours (now that Andurand has finished liquidating his book) and a halt to the commodity rout in China, Trump threw the markets for a loop again with his firing of James Comey, which has implications on everything from Trump's tax policy (most likely delayed due to more infighting between, and within, the two parties) to US geopolitics (will Trump launch another attack, this time against N. Korea to deflect from this scandal?)

"There is no doubt that Trump is dominating proceedings this morning after the sacking of Comey. This is a political story rather than a market story, but yet again it creates uncertainty in the market, which leaves everything the president does with a cloud floating over it," said James Hughes, chief markets analyst at GKFX in London, quoted by Reuters.

"The Comey news is being treated as a risk-off event, and the headlines were sparking the dollar's move down," said Bart Wakabayashi, branch manager for State Street Bank and Trust in Tokyo.

As a result it has been a chaotic, mostly "risk-off" overnight session, in which S&P futures, some Asian markets and European stocks (which yesterday hit the highest level since August 2015) declined on the latest spike in political uncertainty after Trump's abrupt firing of Comey. The USD weakened vs G-10 peers; in Japan JGBs sold off across the curve after BOJ's Kuroda acknowledged that QE purchases have become smaller. The USD/JPY fell in response to the latest belligerent North Korean rhetoric in which a North Korean ambassador told SkyNews his country will conduct a 6th nuclear test, the only question is when. In the other Korea, the Kospi opened higher, rising to new records after Moon Jae-in won the South Korean presidential vote, but then erased early gains a ...

The low level of the market's so-called fear gauge is not only bad news for investors who bet on higher volatility, it is bad for conservative investing strategies that profit directly from market choppiness, too.

Gold futures prices gained Wednesday, pulling the metal up from its lowest close since mid-March, as more upheaval in Washington turned investors briefly away from riskier assets in favor of haven plays.

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